Barbara Ehrenreich comments on working in America

October 21, 2008

Report from the Socialist International Conspiracy

Surely
you have heard by now of the imminent socialist takeover of America, and if you
find the prospect unlikely, ask yourself: How many socialists do you know who
lost millions in the recent stock market crashes? Just as I thought—none—and
that's not only because you don't know any socialists. The truth is that we, the
Socialist International Conspiracy, not only saw this coming, we are the ones
who made it happen.

The plan took shape during a particularly intense
criticism/self-criticism session at our 2000 annual convention in a booth at an
Akron IHOP. We realized that we'd been recruiting no more new members per year
than the Green Bay Packers and that, despite all our efforts, more Americans
have been taken aboard UFO's than have embraced the historic promise of
socialism. So we decided to suspend our usual work of standing on street corners
and hissing, "Hey, how'd you like to live in a workers' paradise?” Instead of
building socialism, one worker at a time, we would focus on destroying
capitalism, hedge fund by hedge fund.

First, we selected a cadre of crusty punks from the streets of
Seattle, stripped off their Che t-shirts, suited them up in Armani's and
wingtips, and introduced them to the concepts of derivatives and dental floss.
Then we shipped them to Wall Street with firm instructions: Make as much money
as you can, as fast as you can, and as soon as the money starts rolling in, send
it out to make more money by whatever dodgy means you can find – subprime loans,
credit default swaps, pyramid schemes – anything goes. And oh yes: Spend your
own earnings in the most flamboyantly gross ways you can think of -- $10,000
martinis, fountains of champagne – so as to fan the flames of class resentment.

These brave comrades did far better than we could have imagined,
quickly adapting to lives of excess and greed punctuated only by squash games at
the Century Club. But we could not have inflicted such massive damage to
capitalism if we hadn't also planted skilled agents in high places within the
government and various quasi-governmental agencies. When all this is over, Phil
Gramm, for example—the former senator and McCain economics advisor -- will be
getting a Hero of Socialism award for his courageous battle against financial
regulation. That's the only name I can name at this moment, but I will tell you
this: If you happened to have been in a playground in the suburbs of DC any time
in the last few years, and noticed an impeccably dressed elderly man poking
around under rocks, that was a certain Federal Reserve Chairman, looking for his
weekly orders from the central committee.

Things were going swimmingly until about a week ago, when the
capitalists suddenly staged a counter-coup. We had thought that the
nationalization of the banks would bring capitalism to its knees, but instead,
the capitalists were craftily using it to privatize the government. Goldman
Sachs, former home of Henry Paulson, has taken the lead, planting its
agents so thickly about the erstwhile public sector as to earn the nickname
"Government Sachs." Among the former Goldman Sachs operatives now running the
country, in addition to Paulson, are the president's chief of staff, the
chairman of the New York Fed, the man appointed to take over A.I.G., and the
35-year-old boy wonder selected to oversee the bail-out program.

According to the New York Times, "Goldman supporters" insist there
is no "conspiracy" and not a black helicopter in sight – just a bunch of
public-spirited investment bankers sacrificing their normal 8-figure salaries
for the good of the nation. But we socialists know a conspiracy when we see one,
and some in our ranks are complaining bitterly that as capitalism began to
collapse, the bankers seized the life raft that was intended to save the
laid-off, the foreclosed-upon, and the exploited masses in general.

Ah
well, we socialists still have the election to look forward to. After months of
studying the candidates' economic plans, we have determined that one of them,
and only one, can be relied on to complete the destruction of capitalism. With
high hopes and great confidence, the Socialist International Conspiracy endorses
John McCain!

WASHINGTON – Freddie Mac secretly paid a Republican consulting firm $2 million to kill legislation that would have regulated and trimmed the mortgage finance giant and its sister company, Fannie Mae, three years before the government took control to prevent their collapse...."

This is simply a temporary setback, my comrades. Soon the Feathered One will ensure completion of the great plan, and Comrade McCain shall emerge victorious. Then, his mission complete, the swallow will depart the nest at noon, LAX Delta flight 1412. Wait, should I have said that last part?

Today on npr's Market Watch they said already The biggest of the banks were planning on using some of the bailout money to buy smaller banks rather than rewrite loans and save borrowers. They are actually and boldly planning to use taxpayer dollars to finance their Merger and Acquisition activities rather than what Paulson promised us they would be used for. This goes to show the thinking in the corporate suites hasn't changed at all and is as opportunistic as always. Without our Treasury performing its regulatory role in the administration and monitoring of the 700 billion dollars of tarp funds we will get burned again by the very same people who started this mess. Even fannie mae and freddie mack have been holding back on restructuring loans when they have the money to do it now. Personally I wouldn't lower the loan amount, but it would make sense to convert arms to 30 year fixed loans a a lower percentage rate. This would add a lot of stability into the system while keeping people in their homes at the same time. What tarp shouldn't do is give the biggest banks the ammo to buy up the damaged midsize and smaller banks on an acquisition binge so they can boost their profits and executives bonuses once again.

We can't give up on America now. Just because our Final Leader screwed up and picked Sarah Palin as a running mate doesn't mean we retreat.

It's time to awaken the great sleeper cells of International Socialism. You know who you are: New York, California, Massachusetts, the part of Illinois with people in it...

Slap on bumper stickers, put up yard signs and, most of all, vote for McCain on election day so that capitalism, with it's fundamentals intact, can rush full speed over the economic cliff with no hope of stopping in time.

You can always trust someone with Cain somewhere in their name just like the bible told us, also his Keating Five involvement shows that he has exactly the kind of leadership and experience this country needs right now. His quarter of a century of service to this country in the Senate shows that he knows enough rich people by now to represent Joey the Plumber. Cindy McCain's 300 million dollar a year Annheuser-Busch etc. beverage distribution company shows that John is rooted to people support traditional American institutions.

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Nicely done. :) Maybe you can explain to me now in the midst of this banking meltdown that no one brings up the ancient history of the S&L crisis?

Ever since Bushy entered the presidential campaign 8 years ago, I've wondered how he managed to get the media and even his mother to never ever ever mention his brother Neil's name. And they NEVER mention the Savings and Loan Scandal of 1988 nor Neil's sweet Silverado Savings and Neil's several breaches of feduciary duty and conflicts of interest.

And except for the one mention of an extravagant AIG trip, I haven't seen any more reportage on the use of the funds taxpayers paid to bail out CEOs and save their Country Club memberships. But, maybe I'm not looking in the right places....

"She was also wearing her hair down in one shot, so where’s Barbara Ehrenreich to revive her theory on Clinton’s hair? Come on, Barbara, burnish your feminist credentials by once again linking changing hairstyles to instability."

I agree Barbara that there is something to "Government Sach's". From Bush's chief of staff to Mad Money for the small retail investor to the man running the TARP they work the econmy from all ends. I guess paulson liked Bear Stearns over Lehman Brothers from his days as ceo of goldman sachs. McCains fascist handlers are so fixated on obama's "share the wealth" comment made naively like a college student it gives a reprise to the term obssessive compulsive, except with the mcainites its a disorder. Has America ever been in such a dark psychological place as it is now, despite our still haveing a lot of wealth? Is this what simply happens when you have george jr. preside over the government? Did his dad see this coming? Watching Snow and Greenspan and Cox at the hearings didn't reassure me at all. But then as the fading middle class, now being repeopled to extinction, I don't matter at all.

“ I believe we Socialists have to follow Sister Sarah's lead and tax the oil profits and mail checks to everyone in America. “

i think you have the wrong guy.

i have made every effort to ignore this silly tendency to label senator obama as any of the following: socialist. terrorist, muslim, racist. i have made an effort to evaluate each candidate upon what they have said and what they have done in the past.

obama in 2001:

You know, if you look at the victories and failures of the civil-rights movement, and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it, I’d be okay, but the Supreme Court never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.

And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution — at least as it’s been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: [It] says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.

obama seems to be advocating the extension of the civil rights movement into the realm of the redistribution of wealth for the purpose of fulfilling social justice. obama faults the warren court for failing to take this step. he appears to insist that to be a recipient of this wealth is a formal, basic right.

to break free from the constraints of an apparently flawed constitution, it would be necessary for the government to redistribute wealth on the behalf of dispossessed peoples.

as one from whom the wealth would be confiscated, i would ask: what measurements would be appropriate in the determination of what constitutes social justice, what is the legal doctrine would allow for confiscation of wealth and its redistribution unto those who did not create nor earn the wealth, why would the citizens of the united states allow the government to be the arbiter of how much of their wealth can be legally redistributed to others.

i have no use for any of the following shorthand: liberal, conservative, red, blue, purple states, progressive ect.

the question at hand is: is it in the interest of the country to cede to the government, the same government which responded to hurricane katrina and which failed to regulate the mortgage and finance companies, the power to confiscate, on an enormous scale, the wealth of some and redistribute this wealth to select others.

we are welcome to set aside the tawdry nature of politics and look at the actual, tangible words spoken and the philosophy behind them and make the determination as to whether this is sound strategy.

We may, in fact, be foolish to trust the government to redistribute wealth. We do not know what principles of social justice will become the standards by which the redistributors will determine when wealth has been adequately leveled.

We do know that when issues of money find their way to the House floor, a lot of Members of Congress grab at a piece of the pie for their districts, which can become bullet points on the resume they present to voters during re-election.

On the other hand, we can look around us and see what happens when Free Marketeers are welcome to invent wealth and slosh it around at will.

The question then becomes, Do we trust the Government, or do we hand the reins back to the Wall Street Guys?

Either way, seems to me that human nature gets in the way of society working out.

instead of wholesale redistribution of wealth as is going on now to the big banks and brokerages and insurance companys and soon the auto companies, why can't government focus on financing nationwide accessable health care, higher education, retirement, and early child care and education? With those essentials people would feel free to take a wider variety of jobs, trades, fields, etc to improve our lives in more ways than simply high stakes gambling to make more money. They would some of the most potentially damaging basics covered and would only have to focus on providing housing, a car, clothes, and recreation for themselves. If someone wanted to work like crazy for a porsch or boat they could, but if another wanted to just work 35 hours a week and focus on their homelife or family they could without fear of going broke from no health insurance or no retirement.

" In some states, like California, judges instructed the state to take steps to equalize school funding from district to district. In others, like Kansas and Kentucky, and in ongoing litigation in Connecticut, the court decisions are framed in terms of adequacy of funding—making sure each district has enough, rather than the same amount. Either way, it's redistribution of what's become a rather routine sort. "

ok this touches upon what brian is saying, that there is redistribution of resources as a natural course of governing, however my concern would be the part about redistribution of actual wealth. couple this with the off hand remark made in ohio that we need to spread the wealth around. this is precarious doctrine.

Roger-
I saw both of your posts. As a sociology major, here's what I don't get about your arguments: 1)The idea that in a redistribution of wealth, those to whom it's redistributed did not somehow earn it. The truth is, in a redistribution, people would finally get what they are owed for their hard work, that they otherwise have no resources to demand from their employers. How exactly do you make the blanket generalization that everyone who makes less than a million bucks a day is lazy? Could it be that all those poor simply can't afford their own army to force deadbeat employers to pay up? Although your argument might make sense in a perfect, altruistic world, in this one you can't expect a few unaccountable fat cats to give people what they're owed, unless a third party (read: the governent) steps in. Which leads me to the second thing I don't get: 2) Your concern about what measurement the government would use to determine redistribution. They tax us, don't they? So, they already have some practice with redistribution anyway, but in a more indirect way. And what's worse: A) Government determines the distribution, or B) a handful of greedy old guys who didn't earn their billions get to decide. Keep in mind that I would trust the goverment more with anything than I would the private sector. Why? Government is accountable to the public, the private sector in the U.S. is not. For example, all the anger over FEMA's response to Katrina masks one fact: They did a decent job, especially considering the scale of the problem. And when we as the public didn't like FEMA's response, heads rolled. Imagine if you put the private, unaccountable sector on disaster relief. Everyone would have died, no relief would have been provided, and no heads would have rolled. So, in a distribution of wealth, I would trust the government to distribute it fairly, according to what is owed everyone, but not the private sector. The idea that we would actually allow someone without accountability to decide what everyone is worth, that is actually the mosty precarious doctrine of all. Ironically, you have embraced this deadly doctrine roger. And the only reason I could possibly see for it is that you were mostly likely born into wealth. Maybe, perhaps, protecting money you didn't earn? I'm not sure, but only the unjustly rich would be so protective of unjustly acquired, unearned wealth. I will be voting for anything that brings us closer to social perfection. And for me, that may mean Obama over any other current candidate.

Here's the truth: I know none of this probably convinced you (not that I'm concerned. You have the right to anti-intelligence). But I think you should probably think about this long and hard. Do some research. And I don't mean wikipedia crap, or any of the google links you pulled out of the toilet bowl and dropped in the forum. I'm talking about serious scholarship, sociology quality. Buy a copy of the sociological forum, read all the techinical journals, do some field work, whatever it takes. But don't resort to trailer park scholarship, and dropping logical fallacies like the sweeping generalization. Anyway, I'm hoping you will be better informed when you show up here later. Currently, a lot of intellectuals could serve your arguments pureed on a platter.

“ about your arguments: 1)The idea that in a redistribution of wealth, those to whom it's redistributed did not somehow earn it. The truth is, in a redistribution, people would finally get what they are owed for their hard work, that they otherwise have no resources to demand from their employers. How exactly do you make the blanket generalization that everyone who makes less than a million bucks a day is lazy? “

strawman argument. please show us all where I said that the recipients of redistributed wealth were lazy or that the reason that they would receive redistributed wealth would be because their employers do not pay them what they are worth.

“ So, in a distribution of wealth, I would trust the government to distribute it fairly, according to what is owed everyone, but not the private sector. “

what would be the criterion for determining that one person earns in excess of the allowed amount thus must have their wages garnished and said wages given to another. lacking that criterion i fail to see how one can trust the government to take from one and give to another with any degree of fairness. if the government were fair those who receive ssi would not receive a lousy $637.00 per month.

“ I will be voting for anything that brings us closer to social perfection. “

your social perfection has been previously attempted. the german democratic republic collapsed in 1989, the full support and direction of the soviet union notwithstanding. the great socialist experiment failed. food vouchers, work assignments, assigned apartments, government directed educational opportunities, all in an effort to level the playing field and promote coerced equality and still the experiment led to violence and failure.

“ Border guards in East Germany during the Cold War were given clear orders to shoot at attempted defectors, including children, a senior official says. “

“ A prominent victims' group said last week that at least 1,245 people had been killed trying to flee East Germany, more than half of them after the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961. “

" Among the many superlatives associated with Hurricane Katrina can now be added this one: it produced one of the most extraordinary displays of scams, schemes and stupefying bureaucratic bungles in modern history, costing taxpayers up to $2 billion. "

judge for yourself. this is the government which you believe will redistribute wealth fairly and competently.

" A hotel owner in Sugar Land, Tex., has been charged with submitting $232,000 in bills for phantom victims. And roughly 1,100 prison inmates across the Gulf Coast apparently collected more than $10 million in rental and disaster-relief assistance. "

" There are the bureaucrats who ordered nearly half a billion dollars worth of mobile homes that are still empty, and renovations for a shelter at a former Alabama Army base that cost about $416,000 per evacuee. "

"what would be the criterion for determining that one person earns in excess of the allowed amount thus must have their wages garnished and said wages given to another."

That's one way of looking at it. But how about this: On a level playing field, people expect to get paid for how much work they actually do, in which case almost everyone would be earning the same amount based on that criteria. However, the highest up work the least. Someone who labors to make a product should get compensated well for that. However, low-paid labor actually finds their wages "garnished" to be given to another, a person who spends most of their time playing golf and going to the opera. To put it another way, if a person produces $100 of product a day, and only keeps $1, then the other $99 dollars goes to the organization. If the top ceo keeps $70 of that remaining $99, for a minimum to no work, effort, or labor, whose wages are garnished? In fact, such a case means that the laborer is paying the CEO $70 of the laborer's wages (since he was the producer) to do nothing. Exactly what criteria are used to determine the fairness of the transaction? In redistribution of wealth, it is not one's wages that are being garnished, but the wages of another being properly returned to those who actually earned it. If you want to see such a system in action right now, take a look at the Civil Service system in the U.S.

As far as the links you provided, they are irrelevant to the discussion. I saw nothing in there about redistribution of wealth. And the links about FEMA, were primarily about citizen fraud. C'mon chief, use your brain before you post links. Post something relevant to the discussion, and use reliable sources. You might as well be posting a recipe on your mother's favorite stew, with the type of irrelevant content you've posted here. Stop avoiding my arguments, and address them.

“ On a level playing field, people expect to get paid for how much work they actually do, in which case almost everyone would be earning the same amount based on that criteria. “

when we still had television years ago, I saw a 60 minutes program about equal opportunity employment. the program featured a business owner of 30 years who manufactured high priced wooden window frames and custom doors on special order. he was in constant violation of the equal opportunity laws as his factory was in a predominantly minority area and he did not have a workforce proportional to the minority population. he made every effort to hire minorities and eventually had to close his business of 30 years because of continual federal fines. the owner has risked equal employment opportunity fines, tremendous capital, invested 30 years of his life, is responsible to pay for: health insurance premiums, utility bills, liability insurance, property taxes, material costs, garbage expense, advertising, wages, business taxes, business fuel expenses, uniforms, employee theft, business automobile insurance and is further responsible for all aspects of the success of the business. what you want is that the owner would need to be paid the same as the person who just walked in off the street who may or may not stay past the next pay period if both the owner and the new employee were each to work 40 weekly hours.

“ In redistribution of wealth, it is not one's wages that are being garnished, but the wages of another being properly returned to those who actually earned it. “

the opportunity to earn the money in the example above was paid in capital risk, and long hours of labor for over the previous 30 years by the owner. he has built up a business and exposed himself to significant financial risk. why now 30 years later do you think that the government can garnish from the owner and give to the laborer who walked in the door 3 days ago and compensate each at the same rate.

“ As far as the links you provided, they are irrelevant to the discussion. “

the notion of redistribution of wealth are common notions in both east germany and china. the links provided are telling first hand accounts by expatriates who defected to each of these countries and documented the failure of the plan to redistribute wealth and level the playing field by means of government intervention. in the chinese case the great leap forward was observed first hand and documented. that effort to redistribute wealth resulted in the starvation deaths of some 20 million individuals.

“ And the links about FEMA, were primarily about citizen fraud. “

failure to prevent tremendous fraud demonstrates incompetence by the government. in addition to tremendous waste by the government there was unprecedented fraud. the action intended was to rescue individuals from a flood and house them on a temporary basis. the role of the government was to provide this service and avoid fraud and waste. the government failed in spectacular fashion. why do you believe that there would be less waste and fraud when the government is the arbiter of the redistribution of wealth, an exponentially greater task.

Roger, resources = wealth. Money is just a way of measuring resources. Since resources are always being redistributed (it's called the economy), the government exists to control the redistribution of resources - to prevent any particular segment of the citizenship using it's leverage over the resources to destabilise society. And all stable societies redistribute the wealth back from the rich to the poor in the interests of maintaining said stability. a few % here or there in the amount the get's redistributed back doesn't make someone a socialist or not.

"what you want is that the owner would need to be paid the same as the person who just walked in off the street who may or may not stay past the next pay period if both the owner and the new employee were each to work 40 weekly hours."

Not exactly. In many cases, the only time a business would regularly have people walking "in off the street" to be employed would be one paying subpar wages anyway. The assumption you make is that the employee won't stick around. But employees have never been treated well enough to stick around to the next paycheck anyway. Keep in mind, I'm aware of some of the responsibilities employers face. I spent years in college and high school working for small business owners, and know enough to handle my own small business if I so desire. But as a result, I also know where the line is drawn regarding treatment and compensation of employees. And I know the private sector could do better. You are concerned so much about government screwing up wealth distribution that you fail to see how much worse the private sector is at it, even with all their wealth and resources. There is no excuse for it.

it is appropriate for the government to appropriate resources in an effort to meet the needs of those governed. this is done as a routine matter all of the time. resources will be allocated for schools and highways and airports and for low income housing. this is appropriate.

Obama: “ You know, if you look at the victories and failures of the civil-rights movement, and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it, I’d be okay, but the Supreme Court never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.

that is not what he means here. he means that there is a vested, formal right in response to political and economic justice to benefit from the redistribution of wealth above and beyond the right to vote and sit at the lunch counter. he chides the supreme court for not entering into this issue.

there is a world of difference between allocation of resources in the business of governing and redistributing wealth to those who did not either earn or create the wealth. there is certainly a need for a strong safety net. to confiscate from one however, and give to another, in an action in addition to taxes, in an effort to redistribute wealth is punitive and inappropriate. if you worked 30 years to build a business, only to have the wealth generated from your sacrifice given to those who have not sacrificed, you would see the injustice.

we seem to be approaching the question from different frames of reference. would you be so kind as to define these terms:

deadbeat employers

level playing field

perfect, altruistic world

unjustly acquired, unearned wealth

social perfection

subpar wages

what doctrine, law or cultural tradition allows the government to confiscate from the wealthy and redistribute to the poor as a formal and vested right, any wealth which is beyond the need for reallocation of resources for the purposes of governing the masses.

"there is a world of difference between allocation of resources in the business of governing and redistributing wealth to those who did not either earn or create the wealth. there is certainly a need for a strong safety net. to confiscate from one however, and give to another, in an action in addition to taxes, in an effort to redistribute wealth is punitive and inappropriate. if you worked 30 years to build a business, only to have the wealth generated from your sacrifice given to those who have not sacrificed, you would see the injustice."

Huh? I don't see where you're coming up with this. Who earned what? What billionaire could possibly "earn" money on such a scale? Who creates what? By your logic, it would seem that every company in existence is a small firm, and that all the employees don't do anything, while the owner is the only one producing. I think you forgot that without employees, there would be no companies, and large companies are built on the exploited laber of others. Kindly explain to me what solid research led you to think otherwise. Could you cite some sources to prove your point?

"what doctrine, law or cultural tradition allows the government to confiscate from the wealthy and redistribute to the poor as a formal and vested right, any wealth which is beyond the need for reallocation of resources for the purposes of governing the masses."

Or, to rephrase into a better question: What doctrine, law, or cultural tradition allows any business owner to confiscate from the workers as a vested right, any wealth which is beyond the need for reallocation of resources for the purposes of company survival and basic living wages for management (obciously, not the billions per person management currently gets paid.)?

And kindly define some of your terms first, as your frame of reference and views are not even recognized in the intellectual and academic world.

“ By your logic, it would seem that every company in existence is a small firm, and that all the employees don't do anything, while the owner is the only one producing. “

i have used the following example in here before.

i live in a small town in the western united states which has a few factories, a university and a large beef processing plant. something right out of sinclairs work: the jungle. the labor pool is overwhelmingly hispanic. the plant employs some 400 workers. they are paid at a beginning rate of $10.50 to $13.00 depending upon job function and experience. these employees are expendable and largely interchangeable. the work is dirty and undesirable. the plant is unable to draw university students to the plant given the nature of the work.

The workers generally lack all of the following skills:

1) united states citizenship.

2) employment authorization to work in the united states.

3) any and all proficiency in english .

4) grade school education.

They perform unskilled manual labor and in exchange for labor (not monetary investment in the plant, not years of service, not responsibility for supervision but nothing more than unskilled manual labor) they receive wages far in excess of any income opportunity in their native countries. Much of this income to sent to their native countries and their families benefit from the profit which the plant produces. This is not to intimate that they are not valued as an integral part of the production. This is to say that they are capable of performing limited functions for the plant given their lack of skills. It is filthy and nasty work.

“ I think you forgot that without employees, there would be no companies, and large companies are built on the exploited laber of others. “

you call them exploited. how much do you expect the company to pay for interchangeable, expendable, unskilled manual labor. if the only asset you bring to the company is capacity (not skill nor experience) to cut meat off the carcass, how much is that asset worth. the accountants upstairs, off the floor, have years of education and valuable, marketable skills. how would you justify paying all at the same rate given their difference in value to the company. the accountants are not expendable and interchangeable.

this is why i asked you to define, and this is your droll notion of a nonword: deadbeat employers. in the typical negotiation for labor and product the labor itself is treated as a commodity. that is why the labor unions bid for work and rates of compensation as if the work itself is a commodity to be bid as you would any commodity. you seem to believe that the labor itself is worth what the worker deserves not what the labor, as a commodity, will sell for on the open market.

“ Or, to rephrase into a better question: What doctrine, law, or cultural tradition allows any business owner to confiscate from the workers as a vested right, any wealth which is beyond the need for reallocation of resources for the purposes of company survival and basic living wages for management (obciously, not the billions per person management currently gets paid.)?

can you in succinct and clear terms tell me why this question is a better question and why employees have a vested right to the wealth of their employers.

billions. rabid dogs. trailer park scholarship.

you are given to hyperbole and fabrication.

having invested years of labor, having exposed themselves to potentially ruinous financial risk, having invested years at university, why would management and ownership be limited by the government to basic living wages in preference to employees who often bring none of these assets to the table and have no loyalty to the company at all.

what do you think risk management does all day.

“ The box-office manager of the Orange County Performing Arts Center has been fired and charged with grand theft in an alleged embezzlement scheme in which he concocted $42,200 in phony ticket returns and credited the amounts to his personal credit cards.

"i live in a small town in the western united states which has a few factories, a university and a large beef processing plant. something right out of sinclairs work: the jungle. the labor pool is overwhelmingly hispanic. the plant employs some 400 workers. they are paid at a beginning rate of $10.50 to $13.00 depending upon job function and experience. these employees are expendable and largely interchangeable. the work is dirty and undesirable. the plant is unable to draw university students to the plant given the nature of the work."

Not that this is representative of most of the underpaid labor in the U.S. Part of the problem is that where you live is major reason why you're out of touch with the social issues that face most Americans. Although, you do mention a situation that is a cause of what sociologists call "split labor markets". This is not the same as "dual labor markets", but I'll let you do the homework on that yourself. Point is, this misses the typical case of what constitutes an employee, worker, or labor in the U.S. The average U.S. citizen doesn't have it much better than those citizens.

"you call them exploited. how much do you expect the company to pay for interchangeable, expendable, unskilled manual labor."

What industries are you referring to? Just the factory in your town? What about skilled tradesmen who still only make half of the cost of living in the U.S.? I think your taking one example and overgeneralizing to the entire population. Not that even your example makes sense.How are the workers in your example truly expendable? And also kindly define "open market". How is it open?

"having invested years of labor, having exposed themselves to potentially ruinous financial risk, having invested years at university, why would management and ownership be limited by the government to basic living wages in preference to employees who often bring none of these assets to the table and have no loyalty to the company at all."

A) Most of the qualities you ascribe above to the wealthy don't apply. Give me names of those to who those qualities apply, and give me their life stories, rather than making generalizations. Most wealthy were born into their economic and social postions, most are then "professional investors", meaning they do nothing all day. Those waelthy who do have a day job are shoo-ins to management because they came from money. So much for hard work. No financial risk on their part, no major personal investments. Of course, keep in mind I'm talking large companies and corporations here. Some smaller firms and those businesses operated out of someone's home do involve some work and finacnial risk. But the giant corporations are the largest employer of the U.S. population right behind the government.
(B) Also, most of the qualities you ascribed to the underpaid American aren't true of most. Most folks in the U.S. (I'm referring primarily to U.S. citizens here) bring many assets to the table. Most have skills, and a large majority have an education suitable to recieve pay that meets cost of living in the U.S., although most of them receive less than the cost of living in the U.S. As of yet, you have failed to show why upper level management is somehow entitled to make thousands of times the cost of living while the skilled producers of the wealth, the works, are not entitled to even the cost of living.

Roger and Danny Boy. Do you really think the heads of these big corportations, wallstreet firms, and banks really earned the 10's to 200 million there were paid? That money comes from you and me all the way up the line to progressively higher levels of management where it is aggregated as huge payouts to the top dogs who are frankly beyond a few hundred thousands at most, parasites on the rest of us. I think that is what obama meant about share the wealth, which everyone interprets as meaning anyone with a job or a small business owner will be ripped of their earnings. He misspoke about a delicate subject and made a mistake. But when you look how the taxpayers are now bailing out wallstreet, the big banks, the big corporations that failed by bad management frankly, while not participating in the profits(really the top 125 american corporations paid no taxes several years back due to write offs and clever tax accountants) is just not fair. Instead we are subsidizing the life style of the very rich when their business plans to fleece us fail. Its nuts. Right now the banks in general are just sitting on the tarp moneys buying treasuries and paying dividends and buying back stock for stock and bond holders. They aren't addressing the mortgage problem with the money though a few are addressing small bits and pieces of it like b of a and wells fargo. And they are still paying bonuses, though less, they are still huge compared to the money the rest of us make when they failed managing their own companies. In fact the big corporations are essentially legalized money vacummers of the working people of the nation through their fee structures. They use scale, deregulation, loss of state boundries, and huge leverage of money already collected to amplify their game, until it went bust. I maintain that its the people who are sharing their hard earned wealth with this elite protected rich few already. What working people are saying now is, "wait a minute" thats not fair so start sending it back to whom earned it. No man in america really earns 200 million dollars by anything he does. Its simply legalistically what he owns and has structured to belong to him. That is not earning it in my book. That is just another technical type of Usury.

Where is Barbara E.? Why no comment on the Obama/Democrat victory from her? Tom the Temp has not posted on his blog for quite some time either. Do you think Barbara E. and Tom the Temp ran off together?

if we are going to give 700 billion in tarp to the banks, wallstreet, and insurance companys like aig, and another trillion and a half in cash injections into the monetary markets where it just seems to be evaporating for a little lowering of the libor rate as the banks et al. sit on the money for their own purposes(paying dividends, paying bonuses, buying weaker banks) why is it so wrong to give what little is left of our manufacturing base general motors 50 billion dollars to re-invent itself and keep all its many jobs going? Really, I don't get this preferential treatment of not even questioning what we are giving the banks while totally criticizing saving our manufacturing companies? The bail out of Chrysler in 82 did work and the taxpayers got paid back with some profit to show for it.

American Express Co , the No. 4 U.S. credit card issuer, is seeking about $3.5 billion in tax-payer funded capital from the U.S. government, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the situation.

why am i paying to revive either general motors or american express. how many companies do you think the government should bail out with my tax money.

roger, I never would have bailed out wallstreet and the banks or done the tarp. I would have insured money markets and bank deposits up to 250k and worked on rewriting the mortgages to change from arms to long term low fixed interest loans, developed a set of regulations to increase transparecy, and accounting accuracy. And by fiat taxed every company for any exec bonus's over 500k an equal amount to send a message. I would increase capital gains taxes for anyone earning an income in excess of 500k to put a psychological cap on excesses and started a series of show trials of the brokers, banks, and rating agencies for clear excesses, and let all the ratings agencys fail hopin newer more honest ones would rise in their place. i would put detroit into a prepackaged bankruptcy to restructure both management and labor before they got loaned a dime, and i would put tax incentives out there for people to buy certain kinds of efficient cars domestic or foriegn. I would start a domestic work core to rebuild infrastructure and improve our public spaces and parks and get kids and other adults involved in learning the old craft skills. I would increase nasa's funding and give more sci and engineering college tuition grants and loans and research moneis to schools. Finally I would have worked to help the good ones of the commercial banks and insurers to survive through a number of ways and let the wallstreet big bank model just plain fail.

This is a rather long article about the Council on Foreign Relations and how I believe that it is a "front organization" for international bankers. If you would rather download the artcle to read at a later date, here is a link to it:

When I was growing up in the Inwood section of upper Manhattan, I remember when I was about 12 or 13 years old I had my first contact with discovering what a “front” was for another business. It was called Tack’s Tackle Shop. When it first opened, it looked like just another business. The guy in the store, Tack, was selling fishing rods, live bait and an array of fishing equipment. It didn’t take long before the kids in the neighborhood figured out that perhaps there was something else going on. The live bait in the window wasn’t alive anymore and local hoods and gangster type people seemed to be going in and out, particularly in the evenings and none of them looked like fishermen. It wasn’t long before the place was raided by the NYCPD and my friends and I all watched from across the street on Sherman Avenue as “Tack” came out in handcuffs along with a bunch of other men. We were later told that Tack’s Tackle Shop had actually been a front for an illegal gambling operation.

A “front group” can be any entity that is set up to appear to be a legitimate independent organization, like Tack’s Tackle Shop, when it is actually controlled from behind the scenes by another organization or group of individuals. These front groups are often legitimate businesses, social or political organizations, professional groups, advocacy groups, research organizations, etc. Organized crime has used legitimate front organizations for many decades to launder their income from various illegal activities. Pharmaceutical companies have used front organizations to advocate for the drugs they manufacture. International terrorist organizations have their front groups here in the United States and as the evidence clearly shows, so do the international bankers.

After researching the formation and activities of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) it appears that it may be a very sophisticated version of “Tack’s Tackle Shop.” The CFR was specifically set up to carry out the goals and objectives of international bankers so that the public positions taken by the CFR would appear to be independent positions that could not be directly connected to the international bankers who personally control and fund the CFR.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) was founded in 1921 by a very select group of international bankers, Wall Street lawyers and wealthy “old money” families sometimes called the Establishment or the Elites. Among the CFR’s founders were JP Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, “Colonel” Edward House (Marxist. globalist and close advisor to President Wilson), Paul Warburg (international banker), Otto Kahn and Jacob Schiff (both international investment bankers). The CFR’s stated purpose at that time was to improve the understanding of US foreign policy and international affairs through the exchange of ideas. The select membership has been gradually expanded over the years, now totaling around 3,800 and includes various professionals, corporate CEO’s, college presidents, media owners and reporters, high-ranking government officials and even high ranking US military officers.

These same international bankers that started the CFR were instrumental in getting President Woodrow Wilson to sign the Federal Reserve Act into existence in 1913 that basically gave these international bankers the power to print money and control our entire economy. To show you the mind set of this core group, one of the founding CFR members, Edward House, authored a book in 1912 entitled “Philip Dru: Administrator” in which he laid out a fictionalized plan for the conquest of America. In the book, he told of a conspiracy by which a group of wealthy businessmen would gain control of both the Democratic and Republican parties and use them as instruments for the creation of a socialist world government.

After signing the Federal Reserve Act into law, President Woodrow Wilson later admitted, "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country….(America is) no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." He was, of course, talking about the international bankers and the creation of the first great nationwide “front organization” called the Federal Reserve that was designed to directly benefit the international bankers at the expense of the American taxpayers.

The late Carroll Quigley (mentor and advisor to President Clinton) who was a long term member of the CFR, wrote in his book “Tragedy & Hope”: "The CFR is the American Branch of a society….which believes that national boundaries should be obliterated, and a one-world rule established."

Rear Admiral Chester Ward, a former member of the CFR for 16 years, sounded the alarm about the real intent of the CFR and pointed out that there was two separate cliques within the CFR:

1. The first and most powerful clique wants to bring about the surrender of the sovereignty and national independence of the United States.

2. The second clique of international members is comprised of Wall Street international bankers and their key agents who want to receive a world banking monopoly from whatever power ends up in control of global government.

Congressman John Rarick, a recipient of the Bronze Star and Purple Heart in World War II and a Democrat from Louisiana who once argued with his party over its increasing liberalism, said, "The CFR, dedicated to one-world government, financed by a number of the largest tax-exempt foundations, and wielding such power and influence over our lives in the areas of finance, business, labor, military, education, and mass communication-media, should be familiar to every American concerned with good government, and with preserving and defending the U.S. Constitution and our free-enterprise system. Yet, the nation’s right-to-know machinery, the news media, usually so aggressive in exposures to inform our people, remain conspicuously silent when it comes to the CFR, its members and their activities.”

By using the CFR as a front organization to push their globalist agenda for America and the world, the “Establishment Elites and International Bankers” have managed to gain significant influence and power in key decision-making positions at the highest levels of our government. They can not only advocate their new world order ideas from within the government by using their CFR members in high government positions, but they can also use individual CFR members and research groups financed by their non-profit foundations to bring pressure from another direction. The international bankers use this process to implement the step by step decisions that will gradually convert the US from a sovereign nation to a subservient position in the new world order run by appointed bureaucrats selected by the international bankers. The CFR is being used much in the same manner as “Tack’s Tackle Shop” was used by an organized criminal group. The international bankers behind the CFR want to give the public the outward appearance of legitimacy in order that they can slowly accomplish their illegal objectives to usurp the US Constitution and the sovereignty of this country.

Many of the most influential international bankers, Wall Street CEOs, politicians, academics and media owners and TV personalities are members of the CFR. They join the CFR for the same reasons that other people join similar business organizations: to make political or business contacts, to enjoy the prestige of being in the organization or to simply use their connections to make more money. The CFR in turn, uses the broad influence of these people and their organizations to slowly infiltrate their globalist ‘New World Order’ plans into American life. CFR members and their ghost writers author scholarly articles that are designed to specifically affect public opinion and future government decision making. These authors and researchers are oftentimes funded directly by one or more of the international bankers’ non-profit foundations. The CFR’s well paid academics expound on the wisdom of a united world and the CFR media members disseminate the message.

In the 1940’s, President Roosevelt began bringing CFR members into the State Department and they have dominated it ever since. CFR members were instrumental in the creation of the United Nations. The American delegation to the San Francisco meeting that drafted the charter of the United Nations in 1949 included CFR members Nelson Rockefeller, John Foster Dulles, John Mc Cloy and the Secretary-General of the conference, Alger Hiss, who was later arrested as a spy for Russia. In all, the CFR sent at least forty-seven of its members in the United States delegation, effectively controlling the outcome.

These same CFR members were also instrumental in using our country’s new membership in the United Nations to create the concepts of “limited wars” and “police actions” that were designed to circumvent the US Constitution and permit an administration to send our troops to war without a formal Declaration of War. It should also be pointed out that these two concepts benefit the international bankers and large corporations most because they allow these entities to make huge profits by providing financing and/or equipment and products to the enemies of our country during the conflict. It definitely did not benefit the US military men and women who were wounded or died in these conflicts. If a Declaration of War was declared, these same bankers and corporation CEO’s would be charged with treason for aiding the enemy during a time of war.

James Warburg, a CFR member and son of CFR founder Paul Warburg testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 17, 1950, defiantly telling the Senators that: “We shall have world government, whether or not you like it – by conquest or consent.”

On November 25, 1959, the Council on Foreign Relations published “Study No. 7”, which openly declared its true purpose to bring about a New World Order through the manipulation of U.S. foreign policy and through international economic interdependence:

· "...building a New International Order [which] must be responsive to world aspirations for peace, [and] for social and economic change...an international order [code for world government]...including states labeling themselves as 'Socialist.' "

The plan for the New World Order and the ultimate control of America by the international bankers, was clearly outlined once again in the April 1974 issue of “Foreign Affairs” the Council of Foreign Relations’ own publication, when CFR member and former Secretary of State Richard N. Gardner, wrote an article entitled “The Hard Road to World Order” in which he stated:

· “In short, the house of world order will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down. An end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old fashioned assault…” one way to garner public support for new international treaties would be to propagandize world wide predicaments. If people are scared of terrorism, financial chaos or global warming, they will be willing to cede their national sovereignty, freedom and liberties for global authority.”

Since the FDR administration, all transition teams and administrations have been full of CFR members. It didn’t matter whether they were liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. The Nixon administration had over 115 CFR members all in key Executive branch positions, most of who continued into the Ford years. Ronald Reagan wasn’t a CFR member, but his Vice President George HW Bush was a CFR member, and so were 28 members of his transition team alone. The Clinton administration had over 150 CFR members in key executive positions. George W. Bush is not a CFR member either, but his father and uncle are, his Vice President Dick Cheney is, and his administration is swarming with CFR members. The incoming Obama administration’s transition team is packed with CFR members and he is already looking to staff many of its administration’s key executive branch positions with CFR members.

Did you vote for change in the 2008 Election? If you did, here’s a partial list of Mr. Obama’s transition team:

Susan E. Rice – (CFR) former State Department Asst Secretary for African Affairs; Anthony Lake (CFR) – Bill Clinton’s first national Security advisor; Zbigniew Brzezinski – (CFR) and Trilateral Commission - Brzezinski is widely seen as the man who created Al Qaeda, and was involved in the Carter Administration plan to give arms, funding and training to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan; Richard Clarke (CFR) - Former chief counter-terrorism adviser on the U.S. National Security Council under Bush; Robert W. Kagan (CFR) argues that interventionism is a bipartisan affair that should be undertaken with the approval of our democratic allies; Dennis B. Ross (CFR) and Trilateral Commission - Served as the director for policy planning in the State Department under President George H. W. Bush and special Middle East coordinator under President Bill Clinton; Lawrence J. Korb (CFR) - Director of National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Has criticized manor of the invasion of Iraq but has detailed plans to increase the manpower of the United States Army to fight the war on terror and to "spread liberal democratic values throughout the Middle East"; Bruce Reidel (CFR) - Former CIA analyst who wishes to expand the war on terror to fight Al Qaeda across the globe. Considered to be the reason behind Barack Obama’s Hawkish views on Pakistan and his Pro India leanings on Kashmir; Stephen E. Flynn (CFR) - Has been attributed with the idea for Obama’s much vaunted "Civilian Security Force". Flynn has written: "The United States should roughly replicate the Federal Reserve model by creating a Federal Security Reserve System (FSRS) with a national board of governors, 10 regional Homeland Security Districts, and 92 local branches called Metropolitan Anti-Terrorism Committees”; and Madeline Albright (CFR) and Brookings - Currently serves on the Council on Foreign Relations Board of directors and was Former Secretary of State and US Ambassador to the United Nations under Clinton.

At time of writing of this article, President-elect Barack Obama's has apparently selected Arizona Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano as secretary of Homeland Security; Timothy Geithner, the current New York Federal Reserve head, as the Secretary of the Treasury; and Texas Democratic Gov. William Richardson as the Secretary of Commerce. Guess what? They are all members of the Council on Foreign Relations. So much for change!

What do Dan Rather, Barbara Walters, Jim Lehrer, Marvin Kalb, Diane Sawyer, Andrea Mitchell and Tom Brokaw have in common? Answer: They are all members of the CFR.

Freedom of the press has always been vital to the preservation of our American Republic. Ever since the early years of our country, it was the American “free press” that stood tall between us and the crooked international bankers, industrialists and corrupt government officials. While some of the major newspapers in the big cities were controlled by establishment types like William Randolph Hearst, who definitely influenced the content, most of the newspaper owners and reporters were independent and honorable people who chose to keep their integrity by pursuing the truth. Most local newspapers, radio stations, and later on TV stations, were owned locally.

As they grow larger and eliminate their competition, major media corporations and international bankers are choosing what you will see on the nightly news while trying to trick you into believing it is unbiased reporting. The very news stories that you are fed by the mainstream media are manipulated to mirror the public relations campaigns of corporations, international bankers and even their favorite presidential candidates. If this is not the case then why, during the course of the 2008 election, was there no mention of the issues that were important to Americans: the threat by big government to our freedoms, liberties and sovereignty; the actions of the Federal Reserve and the issuance of fiat money; the drugging of 6 million of our nation’s youth; or amnesty for illegal aliens. Popular candidates like Ron Paul were either ignored by the media, excluded from most of the TV debates, or asked fewer questions than their CFR candidate counterparts. Of the top twenty media corporations in the U.S, 18 are members of the CFR.

The CFR's strategy is to use their members in the media to promote the need for world government in order to fight international threats like global warming. Both Obama and McCain made the environment a major issue in the campaign, but avoided mentioning the immigration issue. The CFR has long identified the worldwide environmental movement as a means to advance its agenda and has even suggested a global tax on all developed nations, payable to the United Nations of course. Most of the major media companies are now controlled by individuals or organizations that are members of the CFR, including the international bankers. One of the techniques used by the CFR and its membership has been to manipulate the news in such as way as to push their internationalist views on the rest of us.

As the big media corporations keep merging into larger and more powerful companies, they will be able to control public opinion as never before. With their friends in congress and in key government agencies, all the international bankers and their CFR members need to do is advocate bringing back the “Fairness Doctrine” and regulating the internet and their control of the media will be complete.

The average American might find the CFR’s powerful influence over America's government very difficult to understand or believe, but never forget that the CFR was founded by international bankers for the express purpose of bringing about socialism and world government. It is the deliberate plan of these international bankers, who hide in the shadows and pull the strings of their marionettes, to gradually increase their influence and domination over America’s domestic and foreign affairs. CFR members have been in control of our government since the 1940’s. If CFR members are supposed to be the nation’s best and brightest in running the federal government and overseeing foreign affairs, why is the country in such a mess under their eighty year watch? The answer is: That’s the plan.

The international bankers behind the Federal Reserve and the CFR are deliberately trying to usurp the US Constitution and gradually destroy our freedoms, liberties and sovereignty in the process. They are using the Federal Reserve System to bankrupt the country so we will be at their mercy. The deeper in debt our country goes, the richer and more powerful these international bankers become. If action is not taken to take back control of our nation’s currency from the criminals in the private international banking cartel and if the CFR’s influence over the highest levels of our federal government isn't soon broken, America will be reduced to a third world nation controlled by a socialistic world government where our freedoms and liberties would have disappeared and our national sovereignty is but a fond memory.

Many Americans believe that we may have reached a point where it no longer matters which party or candidate wins the election, because both candidates are already beholden to special interest groups and the winner will staff the high level executive positions with CFR members.

The activities of the international bankers behind the Council on Foreign Relations and the Federal Reserve should be thoroughly investigated by an independent prosecutor. If criminal activities are uncovered, then those involved should be prosecuted under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) as an ongoing criminal conspiracy. The American people must not give up their liberties for the false sense of security offered by the international bankers and their CFR puppets. The grip of these international criminals must be broken and the threats against our liberties, freedoms and our nation’s sovereignty must be eliminated. It can only be accomplished by a demand for action by a determined and educated American citizenry, as well as by an honest and thorough federal criminal investigation.

I close this article with a quote from David Rockefeller, the former Chairman and the current Honorary Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relation and ask you to consider the implications of what he has said:

"We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years... It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries."

When I was growing up in the Inwood section of upper Manhattan, I remember when I was about 12 or 13 years old I had my first contact with discovering what a “front” was for another business. It was called Tack’s Tackle Shop. When it first opened, it looked like just another business. The guy in the store, Tack, was selling fishing rods, live bait and an array of fishing equipment. It didn’t take long before the kids in the neighborhood figured out that perhaps there was something else going on. The live bait in the window wasn’t alive anymore and local hoods and gangster type people seemed to be going in and out, particularly in the evenings and none of them looked like fishermen. It wasn’t long before the place was raided by the NYCPD and my friends and I all watched from across the street on Sherman Avenue as “Tack” came out in handcuffs along with a bunch of other men. We were later told that Tack’s Tackle Shop had actually been a front for an illegal gambling operation.

A “front group” can be any entity that is set up to appear to be a legitimate independent organization, like Tack’s Tackle Shop, when it is actually controlled from behind the scenes by another organization or group of individuals. These front groups are often legitimate businesses, social or political organizations, professional groups, advocacy groups, research organizations, etc. Organized crime has used legitimate front organizations for many decades to launder their income from various illegal activities. Pharmaceutical companies have used front organizations to advocate for the drugs they manufacture. International terrorist organizations have their front groups here in the United States and as the evidence clearly shows, so do the international bankers.

After researching the formation and activities of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) it appears that it may be a very sophisticated version of “Tack’s Tackle Shop.” The CFR was specifically set up to carry out the goals and objectives of international bankers so that the public positions taken by the CFR would appear to be independent positions that could not be directly connected to the international bankers who personally control and fund the CFR.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) was founded in 1921 by a very select group of international bankers, Wall Street lawyers and wealthy “old money” families sometimes called the Establishment or the Elites. Among the CFR’s founders were JP Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, “Colonel” Edward House (Marxist. globalist and close advisor to President Wilson), Paul Warburg (international banker), Otto Kahn and Jacob Schiff (both international investment bankers). The CFR’s stated purpose at that time was to improve the understanding of US foreign policy and international affairs through the exchange of ideas. The select membership has been gradually expanded over the years, now totaling around 3,800 and includes various professionals, corporate CEO’s, college presidents, media owners and reporters, high-ranking government officials and even high ranking US military officers.

These same international bankers that started the CFR were instrumental in getting President Woodrow Wilson to sign the Federal Reserve Act into existence in 1913 that basically gave these international bankers the power to print money and control our entire economy. To show you the mind set of this core group, one of the founding CFR members, Edward House, authored a book in 1912 entitled “Philip Dru: Administrator” in which he laid out a fictionalized plan for the conquest of America. In the book, he told of a conspiracy by which a group of wealthy businessmen would gain control of both the Democratic and Republican parties and use them as instruments for the creation of a socialist world government.

After signing the Federal Reserve Act into law, President Woodrow Wilson later admitted, "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country….(America is) no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." He was, of course, talking about the international bankers and the creation of the first great nationwide “front organization” called the Federal Reserve that was designed to directly benefit the international bankers at the expense of the American taxpayers.

The late Carroll Quigley (mentor and advisor to President Clinton) who was a long term member of the CFR, wrote in his book “Tragedy & Hope”: "The CFR is the American Branch of a society….which believes that national boundaries should be obliterated, and a one-world rule established."

Rear Admiral Chester Ward, a former member of the CFR for 16 years, sounded the alarm about the real intent of the CFR and pointed out that there was two separate cliques within the CFR:

1. The first and most powerful clique wants to bring about the surrender of the sovereignty and national independence of the United States.

2. The second clique of international members is comprised of Wall Street international bankers and their key agents who want to receive a world banking monopoly from whatever power ends up in control of global government.

Congressman John Rarick, a recipient of the Bronze Star and Purple Heart in World War II and a Democrat from Louisiana who once argued with his party over its increasing liberalism, said, "The CFR, dedicated to one-world government, financed by a number of the largest tax-exempt foundations, and wielding such power and influence over our lives in the areas of finance, business, labor, military, education, and mass communication-media, should be familiar to every American concerned with good government, and with preserving and defending the U.S. Constitution and our free-enterprise system. Yet, the nation’s right-to-know machinery, the news media, usually so aggressive in exposures to inform our people, remain conspicuously silent when it comes to the CFR, its members and their activities.”

By using the CFR as a front organization to push their globalist agenda for America and the world, the “Establishment Elites and International Bankers” have managed to gain significant influence and power in key decision-making positions at the highest levels of our government. They can not only advocate their new world order ideas from within the government by using their CFR members in high government positions, but they can also use individual CFR members and research groups financed by their non-profit foundations to bring pressure from another direction. The international bankers use this process to implement the step by step decisions that will gradually convert the US from a sovereign nation to a subservient position in the new world order run by appointed bureaucrats selected by the international bankers. The CFR is being used much in the same manner as “Tack’s Tackle Shop” was used by an organized criminal group. The international bankers behind the CFR want to give the public the outward appearance of legitimacy in order that they can slowly accomplish their illegal objectives to usurp the US Constitution and the sovereignty of this country.

Many of the most influential international bankers, Wall Street CEOs, politicians, academics and media owners and TV personalities are members of the CFR. They join the CFR for the same reasons that other people join similar business organizations: to make political or business contacts, to enjoy the prestige of being in the organization or to simply use their connections to make more money. The CFR in turn, uses the broad influence of these people and their organizations to slowly infiltrate their globalist ‘New World Order’ plans into American life. CFR members and their ghost writers author scholarly articles that are designed to specifically affect public opinion and future government decision making. These authors and researchers are oftentimes funded directly by one or more of the international bankers’ non-profit foundations. The CFR’s well paid academics expound on the wisdom of a united world and the CFR media members disseminate the message.

In the 1940’s, President Roosevelt began bringing CFR members into the State Department and they have dominated it ever since. CFR members were instrumental in the creation of the United Nations. The American delegation to the San Francisco meeting that drafted the charter of the United Nations in 1949 included CFR members Nelson Rockefeller, John Foster Dulles, John Mc Cloy and the Secretary-General of the conference, Alger Hiss, who was later arrested as a spy for Russia. In all, the CFR sent at least forty-seven of its members in the United States delegation, effectively controlling the outcome.

These same CFR members were also instrumental in using our country’s new membership in the United Nations to create the concepts of “limited wars” and “police actions” that were designed to circumvent the US Constitution and permit an administration to send our troops to war without a formal Declaration of War. It should also be pointed out that these two concepts benefit the international bankers and large corporations most because they allow these entities to make huge profits by providing financing and/or equipment and products to the enemies of our country during the conflict. It definitely did not benefit the US military men and women who were wounded or died in these conflicts. If a Declaration of War was declared, these same bankers and corporation CEO’s would be charged with treason for aiding the enemy during a time of war.

James Warburg, a CFR member and son of CFR founder Paul Warburg testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 17, 1950, defiantly telling the Senators that: “We shall have world government, whether or not you like it – by conquest or consent.”

On November 25, 1959, the Council on Foreign Relations published “Study No. 7”, which openly declared its true purpose to bring about a New World Order through the manipulation of U.S. foreign policy and through international economic interdependence:

· "...building a New International Order [which] must be responsive to world aspirations for peace, [and] for social and economic change...an international order [code for world government]...including states labeling themselves as 'Socialist.'"

The plan for the New World Order and the ultimate control of America by the international bankers, was clearly outlined once again in the April 1974 issue of “Foreign Affairs” the Council of Foreign Relations’ own publication, when CFR member and former Secretary of State Richard N. Gardner, wrote an article entitled “The Hard Road to World Order” in which he stated:

· “In short, the house of world order will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down. An end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old fashioned assault…” one way to garner public support for new international treaties would be to propagandize world wide predicaments. If people are scared of terrorism, financial chaos or global warming, they will be willing to cede their national sovereignty, freedom and liberties for global authority.”

Since the FDR administration, all transition teams and administrations have been full of CFR members. It didn’t matter whether they were liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. The Nixon administration had over 115 CFR members all in key Executive branch positions, most of who continued into the Ford years. Ronald Reagan wasn’t a CFR member, but his Vice President George HW Bush was a CFR member, and so were 28 members of his transition team alone. The Clinton administration had over 150 CFR members in key executive positions. George W. Bush is not a CFR member either, but his father and uncle are, his Vice President Dick Cheney is, and his administration is swarming with CFR members. The incoming Obama administration’s transition team is packed with CFR members and he is already looking to staff many of its administration’s key executive branch positions with CFR members.

Did you vote for change in the 2008 Election? If you did, here’s a partial list of Mr. Obama’s transition team:

Susan E. Rice – (CFR) former State Department Asst Secretary for African Affairs; Anthony Lake (CFR) – Bill Clinton’s first national Security advisor; Zbigniew Brzezinski – (CFR) and Trilateral Commission - Brzezinski is widely seen as the man who created Al Qaeda, and was involved in the Carter Administration plan to give arms, funding and training to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan; Richard Clarke (CFR) - Former chief counter-terrorism adviser on the U.S. National Security Council under Bush; Robert W. Kagan (CFR) argues that interventionism is a bipartisan affair that should be undertaken with the approval of our democratic allies; Dennis B. Ross (CFR) and Trilateral Commission - Served as the director for policy planning in the State Department under President George H. W. Bush and special Middle East coordinator under President Bill Clinton; Lawrence J. Korb (CFR) - Director of National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Has criticized manor of the invasion of Iraq but has detailed plans to increase the manpower of the United States Army to fight the war on terror and to "spread liberal democratic values throughout the Middle East"; Bruce Reidel (CFR) - Former CIA analyst who wishes to expand the war on terror to fight Al Qaeda across the globe. Considered to be the reason behind Barack Obama’s Hawkish views on Pakistan and his Pro India leanings on Kashmir; Stephen E. Flynn (CFR) - Has been attributed with the idea for Obama’s much vaunted "Civilian Security Force". Flynn has written: "The United States should roughly replicate the Federal Reserve model by creating a Federal Security Reserve System (FSRS) with a national board of governors, 10 regional Homeland Security Districts, and 92 local branches called Metropolitan Anti-Terrorism Committees”; and Madeline Albright (CFR) and Brookings - Currently serves on the Council on Foreign Relations Board of directors and was Former Secretary of State and US Ambassador to the United Nations under Clinton.

At time of writing of this article, President-elect Barack Obama's has apparently selected Arizona Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano as secretary of Homeland Security; Timothy Geithner, the current New York Federal Reserve head, as the Secretary of the Treasury; and Texas Democratic Gov. William Richardson as the Secretary of Commerce. Guess what? They are all members of the Council on Foreign Relations. So much for change!

What do Dan Rather, Barbara Walters, Jim Lehrer, Marvin Kalb, Diane Sawyer, Andrea Mitchell and Tom Brokaw have in common? Answer: They are all members of the CFR.

Freedom of the press has always been vital to the preservation of our American Republic. Ever since the early years of our country, it was the American “free press” that stood tall between us and the crooked international bankers, industrialists and corrupt government officials. While some of the major newspapers in the big cities were controlled by establishment types like William Randolph Hearst, who definitely influenced the content, most of the newspaper owners and reporters were independent and honorable people who chose to keep their integrity by pursuing the truth. Most local newspapers, radio stations, and later on TV stations, were owned locally.

As they grow larger and eliminate their competition, major media corporations and international bankers are choosing what you will see on the nightly news while trying to trick you into believing it is unbiased reporting. The very news stories that you are fed by the mainstream media are manipulated to mirror the public relations campaigns of corporations, international bankers and even their favorite presidential candidates. If this is not the case then why, during the course of the 2008 election, was there no mention of the issues that were important to Americans: the threat by big government to our freedoms, liberties and sovereignty; the actions of the Federal Reserve and the issuance fiat money; the drugging of 6 million of our nation’s youth; or amnesty for illegal aliens. Popular candidates like Ron Paul were either ignored by the media, excluded from most of the TV debates, or asked fewer questions than their CFR candidate counterparts. Of the top twenty media corporations in the U.S, 18 are members of the CFR.

The CFR's strategy is to use their members in the media to promote the need for world government in order to fight international threats like global warming. Both Obama and McCain made the environment a major issue in the campaign, but avoided mentioning the immigration issue. The CFR has long identified the worldwide environmental movement as a means to advance its agenda and has even suggested a global tax on all developed nations, payable to the United Nations of course. Most of the major media companies are now controlled by individuals or organizations that are members of the CFR, including the international bankers. One of the techniques used by the CFR and its membership has been to manipulate the news in such as way as to push their internationalist views on the rest of us.

As the big media corporations keep merging into larger and more powerful companies, they will be able to control public opinion as never before. With their friends in congress and in key government agencies, all the international bankers and their CFR members need to do is advocate bringing back the “Fairness Doctrine” and regulating the internet and their control of the media will be complete.

The average American might find the CFR’s powerful influence over America's government very difficult to understand or believe, but never forget that the CFR was founded by international bankers for the express purpose of bringing about socialism and world government. It is the deliberate plan of these international bankers, who hide in the shadows and pull the strings of their marionettes, to gradually increase their influence and domination over America’s domestic and foreign affairs. CFR members have been in control of our government since the 1940’s. If CFR members are supposedly to be the nation’s best and brightest in running the federal government and overseeing foreign affairs, why is the country in such a mess under their eighty year watch? The answer is: That’s the plan.

The international bankers behind the Federal Reserve and the CFR are deliberately trying to usurp the US Constitution and gradually destroy our freedoms, liberties and sovereignty in the process. They are using the Federal Reserve System to bankrupt the country so we will be at their mercy. The deeper in debt our country goes, the richer and more powerful these international bankers become. If action is not taken to take back control of our nation’s currency from the criminals in the private international banking cartel and if the CFR’s influence over the highest levels of our federal government isn't soon broken, America will be reduced to a third world nation controlled by a socialistic world government where our freedoms and liberties would have disappeared and our national sovereignty is but a fond memory.

Many Americans believe that we may have reached a point where it no longer matters which party or candidate wins the election, because both candidates are already beholden to special interest groups and the winner will most like staff the high level executive positions with CFR members.

The activities of the international bankers behind the Council on Foreign Relations and the Federal Reserve should be thoroughly investigated by an independent prosecutor. If criminal activities are uncovered, then those involved should be prosecuted under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) as an ongoing criminal conspiracy. The American people must not give up their liberties for the false sense of security offered by the international bankers and their CFR puppets. The grip of these international criminals must be broken and the threats against our liberties, freedoms and our nation’s sovereignty must be eliminated. It can only be accomplished by a demand for action by a determined and educated American citizenry, as well as by an honest and thorough federal criminal investigation.

I close this article with a quote from David Rockefeller, the former Chairman and the current Honorary Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relation and ask you to consider the implications of what he has said:

"We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years... It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries."

It could be titled "Nickel and Dimed done Jayson Blair-style". It is all fantasy, except of course for the contribution of that insufferable young man who is busy publicizing his "rebuttal" to your book.

A wonderful piece! If only industrial nationalization weren't "against basic American principles and values." (GROAN). Sadly, there seems to be little reason to be optimistic about the chances of socialist thinking to gain a foothold in 2008. Even during the Great Depression the public stood square against any New Deal policies or programs that even hinted of socialist foundations or values. Sad.

In 1726, Jonathan Swift wrote “Gulliver’s Travels” which was a story of an English surgeon, named Lemuel Gulliver, who takes to the high seas when his business in England fails. Gulliver's multiple adventures begin in a place called Lilliput when he awakens on a beach after a shipwreck only to find himself immobilized and tied down by thousands of tiny threads woven around him by the very tiny Lilliputians. If Gulliver had been awake, he could easily have snapped these threads individually or in small numbers and the Lilliputians would never have succeeded in taking control of Gulliver and making him their prisoner. Those tiny threads were multiplied and woven hundreds and thousands of times by the Lilliputians while Gulliver was sleeping. By the time Gulliver finally did wake up, it was too late. He was totally incapacitated and unable to do anything. He was at the mercy of his new masters, the Lilliputians.

Just like Gulliver, the American people appear to be either asleep or unaware of the growing danger of being incapacitated by America’s own version of the Lilliputians, who are nothing more than well financed traitors to this great country. Do not underestimate the danger. There is a network of prominent individuals and organizations, led by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), who are very much like the Lilliputians in Gulliver’s Travels. Pushing the globalist agenda of their masters, these individuals and organizations are extremely well financed by large international banking and corporate foundations and they currently pose more of a danger to America’s freedoms, liberties and sovereignty than any foreign enemy.

After World War II, this same network of individuals and organizations were instrumental in the founding of the United Nations, which was specifically designed to be used as an instrument in the creation of the New World Order. The American delegation to the San Francisco meeting that drafted the charter of the United Nations in 1949 included many CFR members such as Nelson Rockefeller, John Foster Dulles, John Mc Cloy and the Secretary-General of the conference, Alger Hiss, who was later arrested as a communist spy for Russia, as were several other prominent CFR members.

This growing network of individuals and non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) have been instrumental in using our country’s membership in the United Nations and other international organizations to circumvent the US Constitution by gradually expanding the role and power of these international organizations in an effort to diminish our own sovereignty. They advocate giving a wide variety of international organizations ever increasing powers at the expense of the sovereignty of individual nations. They also advocate for the consolidation of international finances and money creating powers into the hands of a few private international banks. All of this is proposed for the benefit of all mankind, of course, and they always push for global organizations to solve global issues.

The individual “threads of change” that America’s own traitorous Lilliputians use against their fellow Americans are varied and if examined individually would not appear to pose to any big danger to our way of life in America. But added together, these individual “threads of change” are placing American’s freedoms, liberties and sovereignty at risk. This is one reason that many Americans today feel that the American way of life is being attacked and challenged every single day from a hundred different directions and they are right.

Here are a few of the “threads of change” currently being woven around America’s freedoms, liberties and sovereignty by these traitorous enemies within out own country:

a. Millions of dollars in “legal” special interest bribes to our politicians every year;
b. 12-20 million illegal aliens allowed to remain in the country costing the American taxpayers billions of dollars;
c. Election fraud through the use of new electronic voting machines without paper trails;
d. Downplaying of the importance of English as our official language;
e. Destroying our manufacturing jobs through unfair trade agreements like NAFTA that benefit corporations over American workers;
f. Growing influence of private, non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) like the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission on our government’s political leaders and policies;
g. Failed social engineering programs in housing, education, finance, employment, etc.
h. Expansion of underfunded entitlement programs;
i. Ever increasing taxation of the people at every level of government;
j. Frequent attacks on the Second Amendment rights of American citizens from every level of government;
k. Creation of one financial crises after another that are designed to allow the federal government and the Federal Reserve to assume a larger role in controlling the economy even though the federal government’s own actions, policies and legislation caused the crises in the first place;
l. Federal government’s use of the threat of terrorism as an excuse to become more intrusive into our everyday lives and thereby place more and more limitations on our personal freedoms and liberties;
m. Increasing use of prescription drugs to alter the behavior of more and more Americans. For example: At the present time, there are 6 million children under the age of 18 in the USA who have been prescribed mind-altering psychotropic drugs like Ritalin;
n. Deliberate “dumbing down” of the American education system through revised teaching methods and the re-writing of textbooks to include politically correct and globalist agendas;
o. Deliberate and frequent attacks on mainstream organized religions (particularly Jewish and Christian);
p. Surrender of our government’s constitutional power to create money to a group of private international bankers (the Federal Reserve) who answer to no one and who are slowly and deliberately bankrupting this country through the use of “fiat’ money;
q. Manipulated and biased news stories from the mainstream media that are too often designed to support the political agendas of their owners, international bankers and corporations, special interest groups and even their favorite political candidates.
r. Politicization and manipulation of science by special interest groups for political gain through the use of legal and/or economic pressure to influence the findings of scientific research and then using their own media outlets to control the way it is disseminated, reported or interpreted. Global Warming is a prime example of this process;
s. The endless cycle of war that has occurred since America became a member of the United Nations. The UN charter has allowed our politicians to send American troops into combat on foreign soil without formal Declarations of War;
t. The step by step surrender of our nation’s sovereignty to an ever expanding and un-elected United Nations bureaucracy in order to promote the need for a “New World Order” and “One World Government” under the guise of fighting common global threats against all the people of the earth including the pollution of the oceans, the aids epidemic, third world poverty, terrorism and global warming;

Unfortunately, the previous list is only a small fraction of the “threads of change” that are being woven around and through American society today by America’s enemy within. Although this traitorous network of individuals and organizations is relatively small, they have an unlimited amount of money at their disposal to use to pursue their globalist agenda.

They advance their agenda by:

1. Using their own group members currently in high government positions,
2. Using individuals and research groups financed by their own non-profit foundations, and
3. Using the media companies they own to bring pressure on government officials from several different directions at once.

The long term plan of America’s Lilliputians has been to use a small “step by step” process, or “thread by thread” change process that is designed to slowly but steadily advance their goals while at the same time going virtually unnoticed by the majority of Americans. Unfortunately, their success in implementing their goals will gradually convert the USA from a sovereign nation into a subservient position in the new world order run by non-elected, appointed bureaucrats selected by the international bankers.

The sheer numbers of these individual globalist “threads of change” that threaten America’s freedoms, liberties and sovereignty have been increasing dramatically in the last few decades. As these “threads of change” are very carefully woven deeper and deeper into the fabric of American society by the enemy within and are combined with other “threads of change,” they are steadily becoming stronger and more difficult to break.

If America fails to awaken soon to the danger that these traitorous American Lilliputians pose to this country, we too, like Lemuel Gulliver, will find ourselves totally incapacitated, without individual freedoms and liberties and unable to do anything about it. The grip of these international criminals must be broken and the threats against our liberties, freedoms and our nation’s sovereignty must be eliminated before it is too late.

If the plan of the international bankers is ultimately successful, the US constitution will gradually be superseded by international laws, rules, regulations and legal decisions of the International World Court.

If we do nothing and the traitorous Lilliputian international bankers are successful in fully implementing their globalist agenda for America, we will all be destined to be poor, overtaxed, unarmed, bound by the chains and shackles of servitude and at the mercy of our new masters.

Thanks Barbara for sticking up for the working class. You are a true American hero. I was struggling from paycheck to paycheck with no health insurance and I'm a pretty smart guy. I am in middle of reading your book Nickel and Dimed and I really think you hit the point about the state of of the American working class. We NEED socialized medicine we need %100 employment we need security. Who cares if it cost the bouswazie a few more dollars in taxes all they spend that extra money on is meaningless yachts hookers(when they tell their wives there going on "business trips")and bubbly champagne. While the waitress can't get proper medical care for her corporal tunnel. Any charity that they do give is BS(which for some reason I can't get a dime from when I solicit the charity) just to get a tax break or "nice guy" PR.Anyway Ill vote you for president anyday.Your the best

A slightly different perspective . . .
[Report this comment]
Posted by: charles000 on Feb 21, 2009 2:55 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
For years I have worked at that seemingly mysterious intersection of technology development, venture financing, and economic policy. In such context, at times, I analyze data and hear discussions not commonly seen by the "outside world".

This is what I come away with at this juncture, and have sensed is the reality that until recently was a reasonably well disguised iceberg, lurking below the waves of the now very stormy economic oceans we are supposedly attempting to navigate through.

About a decade ago, [1998] I gave a presentation at Duke, and later at various venues on the concept of "virtual commodity assets" becoming the defacto valuation platform against which all future trading indices, including currencies which themselves are a traded commodity, would be based.

The "dot com" debacle was a sort of momentary glimpse into this theoretical universe that had ALREADY become the well established, but "unpublished" reality of the global trading and currency grid systems.

What I found rather interesting at that particular event was that about half of the audience at the time (various faculty and industry analysts) were in complete denial, or simply did not want to see the obvious . . . but the other half not only were on the same page, but thought my presentation at the time was "too gentle" of a description of such phenomena.

But this is the real point, that was told to me in the strongest language possible - the public cannot be included in this "inner realm" of analysis, as the panic of realization and reaction thereof would itself become the process dynamic that would collapse the entire system.

In other words, even then, the system itself was already, in essence, a fantasy, a shell game of virtual commodities and valuation indices that had no real grounding in anything except the theoretical formulae that had been invented to create these "virtual commodity assets".

The implied intrinsic valuation was not based on the system itself, but on the psychology of perception of value in the system.

I cannot stress this strongly enough.

And I reiterate, this was a closed event filled with some of the best intellects of academia and international economic systems theory to be found anywhere, which included a number of theoreticians who had already been long engaged in their hedge funds, derivatives trading, and so on.

This was a chilling indicator of the differences between the psychology of public perception, and actual system health.

This hollow house of cards has been a spectacular theater act for many years, and certainly this was not unknown to many who played at this level in the game.

My sense of the past ten years is that various insider elements in the transnational banking consortia knew, with certainty, that this "global Ponzi scheme" would eventually come to an end in its current form, and their plan was to position themselves as the new power elite coming out of this now occurring perfect storm of engineered economic chaos, as a strategic long term eventstream with "acceptable" collateral damage to large segments of the US and global populations.

PBS can't report this - no one can.

To do so would cause even more damage than what is already apparent, at an accelerated pace that would spiral completely out of control, and complete exposure of this macro system architecture as described will be blocked, by whatever means necessary.

And that's the key here - this is engineered economic chaos strategic objective, and the theory is to manage the apparent chaos within pre-determined parameters.

This is what I believe is the reality, as the evidence I have personally witnessed would strongly suggest such to be the case.

I think that the Socialist International (SI) is totally corrupt to the highest levels. Their idea of a NWO, is not the work of conspiracy theorists. It is real, and soon we will come under some World Government. My question, is who say that can do a better job, than individual governments.

A national telephone survey conducted in early April by Rasmussen Reports, the US polling company, discovered that only 53 percent of Americans believe capitalism to be superior to socialism. Twenty percent favor socialism and 27 percent are undecided.

These results lift the veil on a reality the US establishment feverishly seeks to conceal: the existence of a deeply-felt popular opposition to the existing economic system and social conditions.

The Rasmussen findings, under the ideological conditions that prevail in America, are a stunning refutation of the official manufactured public opinion. To the extent that socialism is understood as the opposite of capitalism, it is viewed favorably by substantial sections of the population.